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Cutie Pie

It’s winter, so I’m on a massive bake- and preserve-athon. Every year I say I won’t do it, and every year my greed overrules my mind.

It was all the fault of my local farm shop, What’s For Tea Tonight? Marie, the owner, had made a beautiful display of seville oranges and lemons that tempted me from their huge basket, backed with printouts of a good recipe for marmalade.

“Oh, go on”, I crumbled, “I’ll just have a cheeky wee 700g of oranges”.

That made 5 jars-worth of marmalade. As it always does, the heavenly smell of the marmalade cut through the stuffiness of the indoors-smell all houses seem to fill up with in winter. It also cut through a horrible cold I have. And after 6 years of making it every January, I finally made a fairly epic-free batch of marmalade that set, without chopping bits off my fingers, burning anything, spilling anything, setting fire to anything, swearing at the jam thermometer, smashing the set-testing saucer, etc. etc. So I had to make some more! I meant to make red grapefruit marmalade, because 1 big fruit makes 2 neat jars, but with one thing and another I ended up making citrus marmalade: red and pink grapefruit, lemon and blood orange. It ended up quite gently set, but oh my word, it’s a good batch! 5 jars again, and beautifully tangy and aromatic.

From this…

… to this!

So then that set off my cravings for cupcakes. I’ve been thinking of cupcakes a lot. I’d love

Your mother’s hungry – better ice another 20

to teach the nursery kids more cake recipes, but am sticking to the brief of mostly going for healthy recipes. So I’m fantasizing a lot about really unhealthy, dirty, stuff-em-in-your-cakehole cupcakes. I baked 2 batches of peanut butter cupcakes last week alone. The Boss and the minxes made a fairly runny nutella icing that was far too sweet and sickly for the gorgeous cupcakes. It didn’t satisfy the craving at all, so I had to make another batch so I could try a dark fudge thick icing. Oh yes, lots better!

With my cold not shifting and growing into a horrible cold sore, I sulked and so me and Mini baked a big clootie dumpling yesterday. It’s perfect for baking with children because it’s literally measure out a long list of dry ingredients into a bowl, mix them all together, then bind them with milk, bung in a muslin, then boil for 5 hours. The dumpling swelled to about double its original size and was much lighter than it looks. I grated clementine peel into it instead of orange peel and the flavour really cuts through all the thick cinnamon and gingery spice. Delicious! We polished the lot off after dinner and lunch today, along with an entire vat of custard and cream.

Oh, and Mini’s christened it ‘Cutie Dumpling’ because she misheard ‘clootie’. I definitely prefer her version!

Next up in the kitchen will be some lemon and ginger marmalade and maybe another Delaware Pudding (I’m seeing that suet is featuring highly in my cravings right now…). Before I do, are there any recipes you fancy sharing with me or getting?